the soupmenu

i’m here. for those who have never been, it’s quite a nice place. Canals, shops, and cafe’s everywhere. Everything is very clean (but still not swiss clean). There are even bike merging lanes and bike signals for the 300,000 people on bikes everyday. No matter where you go on bike, you feel like you are part of a bike gang ready to rough up those jerks from rivierenbuurt!

I’m really enjoying myself here. I’ve seen two corrados, have eaten tons of fries with various types of sauce, we’ve drank 4 out of the 5 days that i’ve been at work, and the dutch are funny people. One might think that this place was designed specifically for pete. If only all of the drunk and high americans and british handed out free mountain dew and cheezeballs, then it might take away switzerland’s fairy tale status in my mind.

It’s odd being in the city and just smelling puffs of weed exhaust. It happens at the most random times….while walking in front of a laundry mat, biking over a bridge, or ordering pancake. It would be quite interesting though if you could put something in the air that dyes the smoke. So you would see spots of color wafting through the city. Perhaps the smoke changes colors as it gets older while floating through the city. It would be a great art installation, someone please get on this.

‘hey pete….how did it go?’

i will try to respond in an unbiased way by just giving facts of my week….

monday…
– alcohol sensor left in locker at school. I wake up at 8 to ride to school…break into teammates locker, spend 10 mins looking for and find sensor. ride back home and jump on the train to torino.
– get to torino, get off the bus two stops early, walk for 15 mins and arrive to the workshop.
– puppets aren’t done, immediately turn around an go to buy supplies.
– 2 busses, one tram, one metro, and a bunch of walking in 40 degree(c) heat, and we buy our supplies.
– arrive back to the workshop and build a simple circuit. Test out circuit with 6 puppets…burn arduino board.
– begin building second circuit. Modelist gets friend to buy us beer.
– 3am…modelist leaves to go home. Beer shows up 30 mins later.
– none of our circuits are working, we troubleshoot everything and still can’t figure out a working circuit. Teammates work throughout the night. I passed out for two hours.

tuesday…
– modelist shows up, when we tell him we haven’t figured out a circuit, he replies ‘oh well’. he packs begins packing up the puppets.
– we get coffee and croissant for breakfast, take a quick shower, then go to the train station.
– we miss the fast train because we don’t have the right ticket and the conductor wanted to charge double the price to upgrade….we take the slow train an hour later.
– 1.5 hour train to milan, 3.5 hr train to florence, hour bus ride to the north of the city, get lost in small town, 15 min bus ride to hotel, drop bags, 15 min bus ride to event.
– we eat a quick dinner then attempt to build a new circuit with the event organizers. two hours later we have a working circuit.
– we test puppets and they work with the basic software. we still need more plugs to connect everything properly.
– continue testing…puppets start to break. we break 3 puppets in an hour. The strings inside of the puppets are too weak because the puppets are heavier than requested.
– we stop working for the night at 3am and drive 10 mins back to the hotel and crash.

wednesday…
– wake up early the next morning, 15 min busride to the event. Take a car into the city. Our driver can’t drive and kills the car 10 times. First store doesn’t have the connectors, takes 20 mins to find the second store.
– get bent over backwards and have to pay 5 euro each for a 10 cent connector.
– return to the event and spend two hours soldering two full wiring harnesses for the two installations.
– Italian dinner. After dinner we have to pack our workspace up, take it down one flight of stairs, and up another flight to another room.
– complete two working circuits with working sensors. we move installation to the official exhibition area.

thursday…
– modelist shows up with steel cable, begins rewiring puppets.
– I spend the afternoon underneath the table securing all wiring, sensors, and lights.
– modelist brings over new puppets, we test with basic software…puppets work. we test with full software, does not work.
– everyone tries troubleshooting new software, while testing heads and arms pop off of puppets. (you can see why)
– call it a night

friday…
– still no working software, two motors break
– talk to modelist, he broke two more motors and burned one by plugging it in wrong
– try to write the code from scratch….doesn’t work…more motors burn
– switch to ‘wiring’ instead of ‘arduino’…organizer promotes ‘in an hour, this will work’
– three hours later…not working.
– we lost more motors. we possibly burn out a power supply due to the motors pulling more power due to the added resistance of the new strings on the puppets. we also lose motors due to the torque created by the mounting of the motors.
– three hours before final final final deadline, we have two working motors and no working software.
– organizers have a meeting on their own, they call us over and state that they want to create a new project. they rush together a project in three hours to save their company money. two of the group members do not help.
– we eat and drink at the festival. VIP runs out of booze at 2am. We make the hour-long walk home at 4am.

i’m now in amsterdam eating french fries and enjoying 20 degree weather. it will be two months before i’m in italy again.

What is the origin of that word anyways? It has nothing to do with height or a calendar !!

I have not been blogging, as the last few weeks have been quite busy. I went to an Italian theme park, discovered my new favorite shot, and finished my last group project for school.

It’s been an interesting dynamic at school as everyone filters out for ‘summer break’. Our extremely diverse school is dispersing again back to all edges of the world for either home-cooked meals or internships. It has been semi-hard to say goodbye to all of these good friends even if it is only for two months, as we all know that the school environment will not be the same when we all come back and start our thesis. No more hour long coffee/coke breaks out in the sunshine, no more fighting at sawa for a table for 10, and no more bike gang trips to the canal….well..perhaps there will still be coke.

I’m heading to torino and florence this week as one of our projects has been selected to be displayed at a festival. Believe it or not, we have a budget to build an installation. It should be a great time and I’ll come back with some good pics/vids of the installation. Hopefully everyone will enjoy it. Immediately after that I jump on a plane and again move to someplace that I’ve never been before. For those who don’t know, I have a two month long internship in Amsterdam. Although the summer is completely different in Milan and I’ve really been enjoying the last month here, I’m quite excited to get back to a city that is clean, has food without starch, and speaks a little more English.

While my blog is semi-neglected, my tumblr gets about 4-5 link updates a day. Stay in touch via my random links!